Watching You Leave
by SweetSinger2010
Summary: On bad days, Hera's chest seizes up whenever Kanan leaves the Ghost. She wants to tell him how anxious she feels at the thought of something happening to him, but she can't.


A/N: Inspired by Leia's line to Han in TFA, and the drawing of Hera that Filoni tweeted tonight. And here I'd promised myself I'd try and take it easy on the angst. Oh well. Drop a review and tell me what you thought! (Crossposted on AO3. Decided to test the waters over there.)

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Watching You Leave

It's something she doesn't talk about—she barely even acknowledges it to herself. No one else knows. And on good days, she doesn't either.

But on bad days, Hera's chest seizes up whenever Kanan leaves the _Ghost._

It's a secret anxiety, something she deals with on her own because there's a long list of things she'd like to do ahead of ever talking about it; throwing down with an Ibaarian mountain lion is at the top. If she were to ever stop and think about it—which she never will—she'd realize that this anxiety first reared its ugly head after Kanan's rescue from Mustafar. They slept in the same bunk that night, which they hadn't done in while, and she hadn't been entirely sure that he'd want to, considering that his rescue had come at the cost of throwing him headlong into a military revolt. But he'd needed her the way she'd needed him and that night was one Hera would never forget. Sharing that intimate closeness, laying tangled up with him, put back every piece that had been broken in his absence—and she woke in the dead of night to find him gone. She'd _never_ felt panic like that, never felt like her heart might fall out of her chest for pounding so violently. She'd all but run through the _Ghost_ , hands shaking, terrified that maybe, _maybe_ she'd only _dreamed_ that Kanan was safely aboard. She found him in the hold, meditating, and she retreated slowly, not wanting to shatter whatever piece of mind he'd managed to find.

She went back to bed and clamped her hands over her mouth, stifling overwrought sobs, keeping her back to the door so that when he came in, she could pretend to be asleep and hide her tear-streaked face.

She hasn't had an episode like that since then—refuses to—but she swallows fear and bile when she knows they're going to be on separate missions. She's learned to relax, albeit minutely, ever since the nightmare that was Malachor. She thinks, _If he made it through that, he can make it through anything._

But the anxiety gnaws away at her, constantly whispers: _You know that isn't true, don't you?_

She has bad dreams sometimes about Mustafar, about Malachor, about the night that Thrawn bombed them on Atollon and Kanan had been caught in it. She hasn't told him, though she's pretty sure he's got it figured out for himself; the list of reasons why she's ever crawled into his bed in the middle of the night is an extremely short one. He doesn't say anything or ask questions. He just twines his fingers with hers and gives her the space she needs to find peaceful sleep again. She always comes _this close_ to opening her mouth and pouring out the pain, but she thinks, _why?_ Because, really, she's been doing a pretty good job of living with this… _thing_ on her shoulders, so why should she break down now?

She's in the middle of a nightmare one night and her conscious mind has alerted her to the fact that the space beside her in the bunk is empty. (She'd sought him out for the _other_ reason this time.) She pulls herself awake, every muscle in her body tense from the now-fading dream. She slides her hand over the space where he was sleeping and it's still warm. "Kanan?" Her voice is sleep-thick and quiet and more panicked than she wants it to be.

He's not far away, standing at the door, just about to leave. "I didn't mean to wake you. Go back to sleep."

She halfway sits up, dragging a hand over her eyes. "Where are you going?"

"Zeb told me there's a stream not too far from the base. I thought it'd be a good place to meditate."

"You're going _now?_ It has to be three a.m." Three is when she usually wakes up like this, struggling to remind herself that he's here and he's okay.

"Yeah," he admits with a sigh. "Mandalore's night cycle is different from here. Haven't adjusted yet."

"Oh." She leans off the bunk, feeling in the floor for any piece of her clothing she can find. "I'll walk with you."

"Hera, no." He takes a step toward her and she blinks in confusion at the firm edge in his voice.

"No?"

"It's _three a.m._ ," he repeats. "You're exhausted. You need—"

"What I _need_ ," she interrupts through clenched teeth, "is—"

She stops, and in the darkness, she can hear how he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and she's willing to bet that his eyes, even blind, are narrowed as he tries to read her. "What? What do you need?"

 _You._

It's spoken only in the silence and eventually he sits beside her on the bunk. She lets him touch her, because that's easier right now than anything else. She's afraid that if she speaks, she'll tell him about the fear that's taken up residence in her heart, and she'll tell him that she wants to be with him more than she wants anything else. Captain Syndulla just can't do that. So she keeps her mouth closed except to kiss him. He reaches under the thin fabric of her sleep-shirt to run the backs of his fingers along her ribs and waist, an intimate gesture that quietly pleads, _Trust me._

That alone is usually enough to set her on fire, to make her turn her body to his and let instinct decide the rest, but not tonight. Not right now. And he knows that, somehow. "You know I don't care if you walk with me down to the stream," he says gently. "But I do care that something's bothering you."

"Nothing's bothering me. I just…want to walk with you." It's not exactly a lie and she's nothing if not stubborn, so Kanan knows it's useless to try and get anything else out of her.

"Well alright," he says, sighing. "Come on, then."

Going with him isn't something she regrets, but in the morning, she feels fatigue settle heavily under her eyes and she thinks of how much easier this kind of thing was at age nineteen as opposed to now. She sits at the galley table, leaning her head against the wall as she sips her scalding caf. Sitting across from her, Kanan frowns.

"Hera, _why?_ Why did you want to come with me last night? I don't have to see you to know how tired you are."

She stares at him, pressing her lips together in agitation. "Because." The word is loaded and she sighs heavily, deciding to tell him as much of the truth as she can manage. "I just—" She stops, shakes her head, gets up from the table and starts to walk out of the galley before anything inside her has the chance to break. "I hate watching you leave."


End file.
